The rise of the graphic novel as a format has meant that publishers can market their products to bookshops, and thus reach an audience away from the specialist - and very male-dominated - comics shops. Which is just as well, because those shops have been having a hard time lately. Although things have stabilised since the drastic recession of the late 1990s, it is estimated that there are still only a third of the number in the US and UK that there were a decade ago.

Fortunately, the artform does not equate with the industry, and over a comparable period there has been a creative boom, with a new generation of cartoonists pushing the envelope of what a comic can encompass.

Chris Ware is one of those cartoonists. In his already classic Jimmy Corrigan strips, now collected by Pantheon - The Smartest Kid on Earth (£18.99, pp240) - he uses page layouts as an experimental laboratory. Frequently, the stories are non-linear, with only the smallest of clues to help the reader along. This gives them an almost claustrophobic quality, which complements the grimly amusing content - the hapless Jimmy, a 'kid' with the face of an old man, is forever on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

The laughs - and there are many of them - come unexpectedly and leave the readers feeling a little guilty that they've got so close to the action. Ware has justifiably been compared with the great masters of the early twentieth- century American newspaper 'funnies', and this volume is a great introduction to his work.

Daniel Clowes is another creator who has been garnering a lot of atten tion, not least because his latest graphic novel, Ghost World ( Jonathan Cape £6.99, pp240), has been turned into a movie. The book itself is a triumph of understatement, and follows the friendship between two alienated teens, Enid and Rebecca. Their rapport is caught with cringe-making precision: Enid: 'Those stupid girls think they're so hip, but they're just a bunch of trendy, stuck-up, prep-school bitches!' Rebecca: 'You're a stuck-up prep-school bitch!'

The story is moving and funny, with crisp, duotone art; the only drawback is that the pacing is a little staccato and betrays its origins in a bit-part comic. Whether there's enough here for a meaty movie remains to be seen.

Joe Sacco prides himself on being a 'war junkie', and his comic-book reports on the world's trouble-spots have earned him comparisons with the cartoonists of the pre-camera era, sent to bring back visual impressions of events. But he is more than this, and as his new book, Safe Area Gorazde (Fantagraphics £19.99, pp229), about life in a town in the aftermath of the Bosnian War, shows, his is a very twentieth-century take on New Journalism.

For example, he is unafraid to put himself at the centre of the story, thus challenging our notions of objectivity. Sometimes, he admits, this could be too much: 'I wanted out, out of there... I wanted to put a million miles between me and Bosnia, between me and those horrible disgusting people and their fucking wars and pathetic prospects...'

And yet it's what gives the book its power, more than the scenes of atrocities, more than the reconstruction of the siege of Gorazde itself. Sacco seethes with indignation and the message of this book is clear: if you don't heal the wounds of the past, they will bleed into the future.

Finally, two cartoonists from the hippy underground era have collections out. Robert Crumb, the man who started it all, is up to volume 14 of his Complete Crumb series (Fantagraphics £14.50, pp111), this time focusing on his work from the early 1980s, mostly from the hugely influential Weirdo magazine. There seem to be two Crumbs at work here: one is the radical satirist in the tradition of Hogarth, who can produce strips of such sublime quality as 'Trash', a howl of outrage against wasteful consumer society. The other is someone with the mind of a frustrated 13-year-old, obsessed with big-bottomed women. Thankfully, the output of the former Crumb outweighs the latter.

Hunt Emerson has often been called Britain's answer to Crumb, but he has always ploughed a different furrow. Citymouth (Knockabout £6.99, pp48) is a lightweight, amusing, collection about, well, huge mouths with cities inside. They endure all the problems of modern conurbations - pollution, traffic gridlock, attacks by giant Godzillas etc - and they have the competitiveness of medieval city states.

This is Emerson on surreal override, and for sheer penmanship there are few who can touch him.